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This paper aims to examine the effects of task and relationship conflicts on team creativity, and the moderating role of shared leadership in inter-organizational teams. An inter-organizational team normally comprises employees from collaborated organizations brought together to conduct an initiative, such as product development. Practitioners and researchers have witnessed the prevalence of conflict in inter-organizational teams. Despite significant scholarly investigation into the importance of conflict in creativity, a deep theoretical understanding of conflict framework remains elusive.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in China to collect data. Consequently, 54 teams, which comprised 54 team managers and 276 team members, were deemed useful for the study.

By testing our hypotheses on 54 inter-organizational teams, we found that relationship conflict has a negative relationship with team creativity, whereas task conflict has an inverted U-shaped (curvilinear) relationship with team creativity. Furthermore, when shared leadership is stronger, the negative relationship with team creativity is weaker for relationship conflict, whereas the inverted U-shaped relationship with team creativity is stronger for task conflict.

The main limitation is cross-sectional, which cannot establish causality in relationships. Despite this potential weakness, the present research provides insights into conflict, leadership and inter-organizational collaboration literature.

The findings of this study offer some guidance on how managers can intervene in the conflict situations of inter-organizational teams.

Managers are struggling to identify ways to effectively manage team conflict when a team of diverse individuals across organizational boundaries are brought together to solve a problem. The findings of this study offer some guidance on how managers can intervene in the conflict situations of inter-organizational teams.

This paper provides understandings about how relationship and task conflicts affect team creativity in inter-organizational teams.

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is an extensively used additive manufacturing method with the capacity to build complex functional components. Due to the machinery and environmental factors during manufacturing, the FDM parts inevitably demonstrated uncertainty in properties and performance. This study aims to identify the stochastic constitutive behaviors of FDM-fabricated polylactic acid (PLA) tensile specimens induced by the manufacturing process.

By conducting the tensile test, the effects of the printing machine selection and three major manufacturing parameters (i.e., printing speed S, nozzle temperature T and layer thickness t) on the stochastic constitutive behaviors were investigated. The influence of the loading rate was also explained. In addition, the data-driven models were established to quantify and optimize the uncertain mechanical behaviors of FDM-based tensile specimens under various printing parameters.

As indicated by the results, the uncertain behaviors of the stiffness and strength of the PLA tensile specimens were dominated by the printing speed and nozzle temperature, respectively. The manufacturing-induced stochastic constitutive behaviors could be accurately captured by the developed data-driven model with the R² over 0.98 on the testing dataset. The optimal parameters obtained from the data-driven framework were T = 231.3595 °C, S = 40.3179 mm/min and t = 0.2343 mm, which were in good agreement with the experiments.

The developed data-driven models can also be integrated into the design and characterization of parts fabricated by extrusion and other additive manufacturing technologies.

Stochastic behaviors of additively manufactured products were revealed by considering extensive manufacturing factors. The data-driven models were proposed to facilitate the description and optimization of the FDM products and control their quality.

Cross-organizational cultural intelligence (COCI) is conceptualized as an ability of individuals to interact effectively with persons from different organizational cultures. To deal with culture differences in cross-organizational context, organizations need to select employees with high COCI. This study aims to develop an instrument to measure employees’ COCI in a cross-organizational context.

The present study was conducted in three steps to develop a scale to measure COCI. First, 39 statements were identified based on a series of interviews. Then, via a survey of 275 part-time MBA students, 18 statements were categorized into four dimensions, namely, cognition, motivation, collaborative communication and behavioral adaptability. Finally, convergent, discriminant, predictive and incremental validity of the scale were tested.

This study extends the cultural intelligence to the cross-organizational context. The COCI concept provides theoretical support for cultural intelligence research in the cross-organizational context. Therefore, the present study broadens the research field of cultural intelligence. A four-dimensional scale was developed to measure COCI, which includes cognition, motivation, collaborative communication and behavioral adaptability. High COCI can enhance employee’s performance in a cross-organizational context.

This study still has several limitations. First, the self-report questionnaire indicated that the relationship between COCI and other constructs may be stronger because of single-source, self-reported data collection. Second, the new scale was developed in China. Although some respondents came from foreign companies, most surveyed employees belonged to Chinese enterprises. Based on the current results, COCI scale exhibits promise as a measurable criterion, but it requires more refinement and validation. Additional work in this area can explore factors that can influence or improve individual COCI. A theoretical network of COCI that includes predictors, consequences, mediators and moderators by theoretical research can be established.

The COCI scale can be used in organizational management. Also, the COCI scale can help organizations understand the meanings of the employees’ COCI and select employees with high COCI during the recruitment. It makes managers easier to choose qualified candidates for inter-organizational projects. Beyond that, organizations can develop employees’ COCI according to the proposed four dimensions.

The development of the valid COCI scale will facilitate future research on boundary spanning. The COCI scale can measure individual cultural intelligence in a cross-organizational context. The present study has verified that COCI is different from emotional intelligence and provided a new perspective to explore the importance of individual ability in boundary-spanning activities. The instrumental support can help researchers effectively understand COCI and explore its potentials in boundary-spanning activities.

Existing literature in experimental accounting research suggests that accounting professionals and people with accounting backgrounds tend to have a lower level of moral reasoning and ethical development. Motivated by these findings, this paper aims to examine whether chief executive officers (CEOs) with accounting backgrounds have an impact on firms’ earnings management behavior and the level of accounting conservatism.

The authors classify CEOs into those with and without accounting backgrounds using BoardEx data. Using discretionary accruals from several different models, they do not find that CEOs with accounting backgrounds are more likely to engage in income-increasing accruals. However, the authors find that CEOs with accounting backgrounds exhibit lower levels of conservatism, proxied by C-scores and T-scores (Basu, 1997). This finding suggests that CEOs with accounting backgrounds recognize bad news more quickly than good news, consistent with the accounting principle of “anticipating all losses but anticipating no gains”.

The authors show that firms whose CEOs have accounting backgrounds exhibit lower levels of accounting conservatism. However, these firms do not exhibit higher levels of income-increasing discretionary accruals. This study documents the impact of CEOs’ educational backgrounds on firms’ accounting choices and confirms prior findings in experimental accounting research using large sample archival data.

This paper is the first study that investigates the impact of CEOs’ accounting backgrounds on firms’ financial reporting policy. The findings may have some policy implications. If accounting backgrounds of CEOs can make a significant difference on firms’ behavior, it is reasonable to make CEOs accountable for the quality of financial reporting. This paper is one of the first to empirically test inferences drawn by experimental accounting research. There has been a gap between archival and experimental accounting studies. The authors propose that interesting research questions can be addressed by filling in such a gap.

The Center for Women’s Business Research estimates women are now the majority owners in 6.7 million privately held businesses in the United States and equal owners in another 4.0 million firms. When part owners in multiple businesses are included the female ownership total climbs to an estimated 15.6 million businesses. Women majority owners account for nearly half (48 per cent) of the privately‐held firms in the United States. Their businesses generate $2.46 trillion in sales. They employ 19.1 million people and spend an estimated $492 billion on salaries and $54 billion on employee benefits. The number of women‐owned firms increases at twice the rate of all new firms (14 per cent versus 7 per cent) and the number of employees nearly as fast (30 per cent versus 18 per cent). Women owners are rapidly moving into all industries, with the fastest growth percentages in the fields of construction (30 per cent), transportation, communications and public utilities (28 per cent) and agricultural services (24 per cent). Worldwide, with women entrepreneurs in under developed countries leading the way, women‐owned firms now comprise between one‐fourth and one‐third of all businesses. Given the numbers, it would be almost impossible to overestimate the impact of women owned businesses in today’s global economy.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Now that shopping online is normal rather than being a minority activity, and that users include people of disparate ages, incomes and technical experience, the focus should be on the customer rather than the technology. As websites become better and better, easier to use and offer believable assurances that your payment details are safe in their hands, so the necessity for differentiation increases.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate a new matching sample comparison method, the industry size peer matching method.

Based on archival financial data from Compustat and econometric methods, the paper first validates that such a method will result in firms being divided into more homogenous groups, making peer‐performance comparison more meaningful. Then it compares this new peer matching method with previous methods through two resource‐based related studies in the IT valuation context.

The results show that the industry size matching method is a better method because: it is theoretically grounded, addressing industry, size, and random shock effects and, at the same time, avoids the selection bias caused by using a single firm as benchmark; and empirically such a technique results in more homogeneous groups and can explain more firm‐level returns than the industry‐only classification.

Matched sample comparison group analysis is widely used in both academy and industry. The paper's theoretically grounds and empirically validated matching sample comparison method provides researchers and practitioners with a tool for their future research, performance evaluation, earning management detection, or compensation contract design, when selecting the right peers is called for.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how networks of boards of directors affect relative performance evaluation (RPE) in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation.

In this study, the authors propose that an interlocking network is an important inter-corporate setting, which has a bearing on whether boards decide to use RPE in CEO compensation. They adopt four typical graph measures to depict the centrality/position of each board in the interlock network: degree, betweenness, eigenvector and closeness, and study their impacts on RPE use.

The authors find that firms that have more connected board members and whose board members are connected to better connected firms are more likely to reward their CEOs contingent on their peers’ performance, indicating that information transmission along the board interlock network facilitates the adoption of RPE. This result is robust to alternative measures for board interlock networks and various types of CEO compensation. It highlights the role of interlocking directorates in disseminating information and practice of RPE use along board network.

The authors use social network analysis to measure the relationships and flows between the connected nodes and study the impact on executive compensation design.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of tenure on earnings management.

Analytical model; multivariate regression analysis.

The paper predicts that managers are conservative in managing earnings when they first start to take top managerial positions, and then become aggressive in the next few years. Once they reach the maximum level of earnings management, they will become conservative again and report earnings less aggressively. This inverted U-shaped relationship between tenure and earnings management is confirmed by the data from the Chinese stock market.

It is based on China stock market data. Generalization of the research results to other countries is limited.

With the knowledge of when earnings management is more likely to occur, regulators can set up policies targeting firms and managers with certain characteristics, instead of requiring observances from all firms and managers. This limited scope can greatly reduce the costs of preventing and identifying earnings management, while effectively maintaining the quality of earnings in the meantime.

This paper examines the earnings management behavior related to CEO tenure. It is hoped that the research results can improve the overall understanding of earnings management, then social wealth spent on preventing and identifying it could be reduced.

It is an original work.

The goal of this chapter is to respond to the theoretical inquiries by scholars who are interested in how the public–private partnership (PPP) models adapt to China’s context where political power dictates economic strategies. We also want to provide suggestions to policy designers who aim to promote a sustainable investment environment for domestic and international investors. We review the literature that explains the upside and downside of PPP projects in contemporary China. (1) We classify the trajectory of PPP evolution into four phases, i.e., emergence, growth, recession and revival. (2) We note that private companies take a disadvantageous position in the partnership compared with governments and state-owned enterprises because of a lack of specialized legislation, unequal competition between private companies and state-owned enterprises and the opposition from the civic society. (3) We identify political risks as the most influential risks. Political risks also lead to the misallocation of other risks between public and private parties that contributes to the high failure rate of China’s PPP projects. Based on these findings, we recommend governments to draft specialized legislation, stabilize the political environment and provide favourable subsidies to local governments to limit the risks involved in PPP projects. We also advise private enterprises and state-owned enterprises to focus on negotiating over task and risk division with governments when they make decisions to participate in PPP projects. This full review of studies on PPP development in China provides reliable recommendations to scholars, governments and enterprises.